Fragrant Flower (9 page)

Perhaps one day she would find him, and together they would defy her uncle.

Even to think about it made Azalea tremble.

Sir Frederick was intimidating, and she knew that if, as her legal Guardian, he intended her not to marry – as he had said – she would not be able to do so.

“Mama would have wanted me to be happy,” she told herself.

They had talked together of marriage.

“You love Papa very much, do you not, Mama?” she had asked.

“I love him with all my heart and with all my soul, Azalea,” her mother replied. “One day you will fall in love, and you will realise, as I did, that money and social position are completely unimportant beside the fact that one is loved and one loves!”

There was something in her mother’s voice and the smile on her lips which made Azalea know she had found something very wonderful and very beautiful.

“Love is beauty,” she told herself now, “the beauty that I long for, the beauty that I lost when I left India.”

Azalea played with the children every afternoon and sometimes in the morning, until gradually the sea grew calmer, the air warmer, and they were through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean.

The grown-up passengers began to recover and the stewardesses told Azalea that they could no longer allow the children of the Third Class passengers to come up to the Writing Room in the Second Class.

Soon she found herself spending any time she was free in Mrs. Chang’s cabin, and they became friends.

“How I thank you for gracious kindness me and Jam Kin?” Mrs. Chang asked.

“You have been kind to me,” Azalea said. “I should have been very lonely if I had not been able to talk to you.”

She paused and then she said a little tentatively,

“I wonder if I might ask you something?”

“Please ask,” Mrs. Chang replied.

“I want to learn Chinese,” Azalea said, “and I do not know how to start about it.”

“I teach,” Mrs. Chang said.

“No, no! I did not mean that!” Azalea answered quickly. “I would not wish to impose upon you. It is just that I thought you might have a book or something very simple by which I could start to understand the language.”

“I talk Mr. Chang. You wait.”

Mrs. Chang left Azalea with Jam Kin and after a short while came back to say excitedly,

“Come! Come meet Mr. Chang.”

Azalea was only too willing to follow her. She was very anxious to meet Mr. Chang. She had wondered so often what he was like.

Mrs. Chang led her into the Sitting Room which lay between the two sleeping cabins.

Seated in a comfortable chair was a Chinese gentleman who looked, Azalea thought, exactly as she might have expected.

He was dressed in an exquisitely embroidered Chinese robe and his feet were in padded slippers. On his head he wore a small round cap and his queue, which fell down his back, was thick, even though it was nearly white like his beard.

He had a fine face, Azalea thought, but while she had a quick impression of his appearance, she was embarrassed as Mrs. Chang went down on her knees and prostrated herself.

“Honourable husband,” she said in English, “may humble insignificant wife present kind and honourable English lady.”

Mr. Chang rose to his feet and bowed with his hands inside his wide sleeves. Azalea curtsied, even though she was certain that her aunt would disapprove of her curtsying to a Chinese.

“I understand from my unimportant wife that she and my son Jam Kin are greatly indebted to you, Miss Osmund,” he said in almost perfect English.

“It has been a great pleasure, Mr. Chang, to be able to help a little while your wife has been so ill.”

“Women are bad sailors,” Mr. Chang said. “Will you honour me by sitting down, Miss Osmund, on this inferior and uncomfortable chair?”

It was very Chinese, Azalea knew, to disparage one’s own possessions, but she thought the P. & O. might have been somewhat displeased at the description of one of their well-padded armchairs.

She seated herself and Mrs. Chang rose from the floor to sit on a low stool.

“My wife tells me that you wish to learn our difficult language,” Mr. Chang said.

There was a note in his voice which made Azalea sure he thought it most improbable that she would ever achieve such an ambition.

“I would like to be able to read, and also to talk with the people of Hong Kong,” Azalea answered. “I am half-Russian, so perhaps it will not be as difficult for me as it would be for someone who was completely European.”

“You will find it a difficult language,” Mr. Chang said. “There are various dialects of Chinese, but Cantonese is most commonly used in Hong Kong.”

“Then I would like to learn Cantonese,” Azalea said.

“The original Chinese characters were simple hieroglyphics like ancient Egyptian ones.”

“They are very beautiful,” Azalea said and she thought, although his expression did not alter, he was pleased by her praise.

“Miss Osmund teach me speak better English,” Mrs. Chang said. “I teach Chinese, if Honourable husband permit.”

“I permit!” Mr. Chang said quietly.

After that, two or three times a day, Azalea slipped down to the Second Class deck and into Mrs. Chang’s cabin.

She discovered her name was Kai Yin and she was the third wife of Mr. Chang. She was very accomplished and could embroider and paint exquisitely on silk.

She could make the Chinese characters flow from her hand as she wrote from right to left on the heavy parchment paper her husband had provided for their lessons.

She was child-like in her enjoyment of the ridiculous, and she would laugh at the mistakes Azalea made until sometimes the tears came into her eyes, she found it so amusing.

In Chinese it was very easy to make mistakes because every monosyllable had several basic different meanings and everything depended on the inflection of the voice.

Azalea found
hsing
meant awaken, passionless, anger, rise, punish, apricot, figure and to blow the nose with the fingers!
Hsing
also meant ‘sex.’

Fortunately, Azalea, as she had hoped, did not find it as difficult as an ordinary English girl might have done, and she also had a musical ear.

By the time they had sailed through the Mediterranean, Lady Osmund was on her feet again.

No longer under the influence of the ‘Soothing Syrup’ the Doctor had prescribed, she found dozens of things for Azalea to do for her.

But she had no wish for her to accompany the twins when they walked the deck in the sunshine, or sat in the Saloon gossiping with the other passengers whom Lady Osmund considered of enough social importance.

“I cannot stay long,” Azalea said to Mrs. Chang. “My aunt has given me a dress to mend and some handkerchiefs to embroider. If I stay with you I shall never get them done.”

“I help,” Mrs. Chang said.

“I could not let you do that,” Azalea protested.

“We sew and talk Cantonese,” Mrs. Chang insisted.

What had been a boring chore became an amusing one. Besides, Azalea’s cabin was so dark it hurt her eyes to work there for long. It was also very hot.

Sometimes there were so many things that Mrs. Chang wanted to ask about England, and so much Azalea had to tell her, that it was quicker to talk in English, but at other times Mrs. Chang was a strict teacher.

“You say Chinese word,” she would order sternly. Then she would go into peals of laughter as Azalea made some remark with a
double entendre
that – according to Mrs. Chang – was quite unrepeatable!

“Your embroidery is certainly improving,” Lady Osmund said one evening.

Azalea was so surprised at being praised by her aunt that for a moment she could find no words in which to reply.

“I had thought that when we reach Hong Kong it might be a good idea for you to take some lessons in embroidery because it would be cheaper than having to pay the Chinese,” Lady Osmund said, “but now I wonder if you really need them.”

She then produced quite a number of gowns and underclothes that she wanted either embroidered or appliquéd, and Azalea wondered almost despairingly if she would ever be able to keep up the standard that Mrs. Chang had set for her.

When they went to the Dining Saloon for meals, Lady Osmund made quite certain that Azalea was not seated anywhere near Lord Sheldon.

There was always either Violet or Daisy beside him, but he took to coming down later and later to meals, and usually they had finished before he appeared.

Azalea sometimes wondered if it was because he found the twins impossible to talk to, while the man who occupied the chair on his other side was undoubtedly a bore.

One evening, after she was supposed to have gone to bed, Azalea crept up on deck.

She was well aware how reprehensible her aunt would think her doing such a thing, but the evenings were warm and the sky was filled with stars.

Azalea longed to feel against her cheeks the soft, moist air that they had encountered after reaching the Red Sea. They had gone ashore at Alexandria, and when they rejoined the ship to sail on to Port Said they had seen less and less of Lord Sheldon.

Azalea was sure he was deliberately avoiding Lady Osmund. Unfortunately her aunt thought so too, and was extremely cross with the twins.

“Why can you not make yourselves more pleasant?” she asked them. “You had Lord Sheldon sitting next to you at dinner the other evening, Violet, and I noticed that you made no effort to converse with him. Why could you not ask him about Hong Kong or India, where he met your father?”

“What should I say, Mama?” Violet asked helplessly.

“Ask him to tell you about the places he has visited,” Lady Osmund said in an irritated tone. “Really, what is the point of my spending all this money on elaborate gowns for you both if you do nothing but talk to each other?”

She looked at their pretty, stupid faces and her eyes narrowed for a moment.

“If I have much more nonsense,” she said, “and you do not put yourselves out to be ingratiating, I shall send one of you home!”

There was silence for a moment and then the twins cried out simultaneously,

“No, no, Mama! You cannot do that! We cannot be separated!”

“I am half inclined to believe that is the best thing to do,” Lady Osmund said. “I shall talk to your father about it.”

She swept from the cabin leaving the twins staring at each other despairingly.

“We cannot be parted – we cannot!” they cried in identical voices and turned to Azalea.

“Mama did not mean it, did she?”

Because she was sympathetic, knowing how much it meant for them to be together, Azalea said,

“You must try when your mother is there to talk and smile at any young man to whom she introduces you.”

“I do not mind some men,” Daisy said, “but Lord Sheldon frightens me! He is so stiff and, besides, he is old!”

“I should think he is about twenty-nine,” Azalea said, “or perhaps thirty. That is not so old, Daisy.”

“It is old to me,” Daisy retorted, and Azalea felt that was somehow very true.

Now as she reached the deck she found to her relief that it was empty. Everyone who had not retired to bed, was in the Saloon playing cards or else in the Smoking Room where the Bar was situated.

Lady Osmund never went there, but Azalea used to hear laughter and raised voices and thought as she passed the open door that it sounded much the gayest part of the ship.

She went to the rail to lean over it and watch the phosphorescence in the water moving away from the ship’s side. It was like a reflection of light from the stars above her head and she looked up, thinking that the sky seemed big and boundless, stretching away into infinity, and having a mystery that she had never noticed when she was in England.

She heard a footstep behind her and knew instinctively without turning her head who was there.

“You are very elusive, Miss Osmund,” a voice said, and she thought there was a slightly mocking note in it.

Slowly, because she was shy, she turned to look at him. She could see his face very clearly in the moonlight and she saw that he was looking at her in that strange searching way which had seemed characteristic of him ever since she had known him.

“Where do you hide yourself?” he asked. “And I would like you to answer that question.”

“Why should it be of interest to you?” Azalea enquired.

“Shall I say I am curious about someone who hides behind curtains and can talk Russian?”

Azalea was suddenly very still.

“H – how did you – k – know that?” she asked after a moment.

“Perhaps I should have said that you can
sing
in Russian.”

Azalea realised that he must be aware of the times she had spent with the children.

She did not pretend to misunderstand. Instead she said,

“It was the only song I knew where the children could join in by clapping their hands.”

“The stewardesses are full of your praises.”

“They were very overworked during the storm.”

“And you are a good sailor?”

“Apparently – so.”

“I think perhaps you are a very unusual person, Miss Osmund. What else interests you, besides information on Hong Kong, children who need entertaining and, perhaps the Chinese?”

Azalea was very still.

“How did you – learn of – that?”

“I have ways of finding out what I want to know,” Lord Sheldon replied. Azalea was about to tell him that it was none of his business, when she realised that should he mention to her aunt what she had been doing, she would be in grave trouble. After a moment she said in a very low voice,

“Please – would you say – nothing to Aunt Emily about this? She would not – approve. She would be very – angry.”

“You are afraid of her! Why?”

“My parents are dead. My uncle took me into his – house but they did not – want me.”

Lord Sheldon rested his arms on the rail and looked out to sea.

“Is it hard to feel unwanted?” he asked, surprisingly.

“It is humiliating to be kept out of charity, and not out of affection.”

Azalea spoke the truth without thinking. Then she thought she had been indiscreet and looked at him apprehensively.